Return of the Liberal Long-Gun Registry

April 26, 2017

In a move that will shock almost no one, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, with Ralph Goodale leading the charge, are moving to create a new long-gun registry.

Goodale has loaded his new Firearms Advisory Committee with Liberal appointees, none of whom are firearm-friendly. They are now laying the groundwork for a return to the days when law-abiding hunters and farmers were made into criminals.

The Liberals promised during their 2015 campaign that they would require firearms vendors to keep records of all inventory and every purchase, along with the buyer’s personal information, for the expressed purpose of assisting police in their investigations. Their intention is to have access to a list of compiled information on firearms buyers and store inventory. The legislation to enact this campaign promise is expected to be introduced in the House of Commons sometime this spring.

As an insult to the intelligence of law-abiding gun owners, Goodale insists that this will not be a long-gun registry. I am not sure what else you would call a database of firearm buyers’ personal information and purchase history. If it looks like a long-gun registry and acts like a long-gun registry, then it will be a long-gun registry.

Conservative Members of Parliament have fought and won this fight once before, and you can rest assured that we will do so once again. The last Liberal long-gun registry ended up costing Canadian taxpayers over $2 billion, while doing nothing to reduce crime or strengthen efforts to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. It was both exorbitantly wasteful and tremendously ineffective.

That is why our previous Conservative government scrapped the registry and instead passed laws that actually made Canada a safer place to live, examples of which are the Safe Streets and Communities Act, the Eliminating Pardons for Serious Crimes Act, and the Ending Entitlements for Prisoners Act.

Rest assured that I will continue to publicly oppose any attempt by the Liberals to bring back their old long gun registry, especially this underhanded attempt to bring it in through a back-door. Law-abiding Canadian hunters and farmers deserve better than this from their government.